26 Aug 2026
By Albany HR.
You’re spending money on employee perks. Maybe it’s a wellbeing app, maybe it’s enhanced leave, maybe it’s something you introduced a couple of years ago and haven’t thought about since.
But do you actually know if any of it is working?
Most business owners don’t. They introduce benefits with good intentions and then never check whether those benefits made any difference at all.
That’s cash going out the door with no way of knowing what you’re getting back.
Let me walk you through how to fix that.
Employee benefits exist to support your team. That’s the whole point. But you’re also running a business, and every pound you spend needs to contribute something back, whether that’s keeping good people, improving performance, or reducing the amount of time lost to absence.
If you can’t connect a perk to a measurable outcome, you have no way of knowing whether it’s earning its place in your budget. You could be funding something that nobody uses or values. And without a baseline to compare against, you’ll never spot the difference between a benefit that’s pulling its weight and one that’s quietly draining your resources.
The fix is straightforward. Before you introduce or renew any perk, set a clear target for what it should achieve. Then measure it.
You don’t need a complicated dashboard or expensive software. Four simple measures will give you a clear picture of whether your benefits are doing their job.
Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)
A single question, asked quarterly: on a scale of zero to ten, how likely are your employees to recommend you as an employer? The score runs from minus 100 to plus 100 and it’s one of the most reliable indicators of engagement. It takes about two minutes to run.
Employee Satisfaction Score (ESAT)
Short pulse surveys every three to six months give you a deeper view of how people feel about their role and their working environment. When you use ESAT alongside eNPS, you start to build a much fuller picture of what’s going on beneath the surface.
Absenteeism rate
Track this monthly as a percentage of total working days. If your wellbeing perks are having a genuine impact, you’ll see a sustained drop over time. If the number stays flat, that’s a clear signal something isn’t landing.
Retention rate
Measure this annually and break it down by team or role. If you’re losing people from one particular area of the business, that’s where to focus your attention first.
The golden rule is simple: survey before you spend. Then check again at three months and six months. If nothing has shifted, stop spending on it.
Some benefits consistently show up as effective in small businesses. Others look appealing but don’t move the needle.
Flexible and hybrid working is the single strongest driver of eNPS improvement across industries. It costs nothing beyond the time needed to create a clear, written policy. And that policy part matters. Without it, you’ll end up with inconsistency and resentment, which defeats the purpose entirely.
Enhanced leave and mental health days have a direct link to reducing absenteeism. Employees place a high value on these relative to what they actually cost you. In terms of return on your people budget, this is one of the better investments you can make.
Learning and development has a measurable positive effect on satisfaction scores, especially among employees under 35. It also ties into performance, so the benefit isn’t limited to retention. You’re also getting more from your people while they’re with you.
Financial wellbeing support, such as salary advance schemes or access to financial coaching, tackles one of the biggest causes of both absence and disengagement. With the ongoing cost of living pressures, financial stress is affecting more of your team than you might realise.
One important note before you introduce any non-cash benefit: you need to check for HMRC liability. Things like private healthcare and gym memberships are classed as benefits in kind. They must be valued and reported through P11D before they go live.
There are a few patterns we see regularly that cost businesses money without delivering anything in return.
Copying what a competitor offers without any thought about whether it suits your own team is a common one. Just because another business runs a particular scheme doesn’t mean it will work for your people.
Applying a blanket approach is another. A free gym membership might be brilliant for some of your staff and completely irrelevant to others. What appeals to one age group or team won’t necessarily land with another.
Poor communication is surprisingly widespread too. If your employees don’t know a benefit exists, you’re spending money on something that has zero impact. It’s worth auditing what you currently offer and checking whether your team is actually aware of it.
And finally, if you can’t define what success looks like for a particular perk within six months, it’s very difficult to justify continuing to fund it.
Before you review or expand your benefits offering, take a moment to reflect on where you stand right now.
If you’re unsure on more than one of those, it’s a good sign that a proper review would be worthwhile. HR consultancy services in Edinburgh and Glasgow can help you work through each of these questions with clarity and confidence.
An independent HR consultancy can look at your business as it stands today and help you build a benefits strategy that’s grounded in real data. Every pound you invest gets tied to a measurable outcome, whether that’s improved wellbeing, stronger performance, or better retention.
That means fewer guesses and a much better chance that your investment actually keeps the people you want to keep.
If you’re not sure whether your current perks are delivering value, we’d love to have a conversation about it.
As an outsourced HR consultancy in Edinburgh and Glasgow, we can help you assess what’s working, identify what isn’t, and put a plan in place that makes a genuine difference to your business.
Please get in touch for a chat and let’s take a look at where you stand.
